Qantas flight a money-spinner

It’s the world's second busiest air route. For Qantas, it also ranks as one of the world’s most lucrative.

A Qantas aircraft lands. Pic: Andreas Smetana

As the second busiest air route in the world, Melbourne-Sydney is also one of the most lucrative - potentially generating $1.27 billion in revenue for Qantas in the last year.

Air traffic data crunched by analytics firm OAG has ranked the Australian domestic service second only to British Airways’ New York-London flights on a list of the world’s highest revenue routes.

According to the data Melbourne-Sydney, with 36,229 scheduled flying hours in 2018-19, generated the equivalent of almost $35,000 an hour for Qantas.

In comparison, New York-London produced $40,000 an hour for British Airways, or $1.7 billion for the year to June 30.

Other services to make the top five were Emirates’ London to Dubai, with a return of $1.22 billion and Singapore Airlines’ London-Singapore, at $1.08 billion.

United Airlines’ San Francisco-Newark was fifth with total revenue of $1.01 billion. The route also had the highest number of scheduled flying hours, at 53,516 in 2018-19.

Singapore Airlines appeared again in ninth place with its Sydney-Singapore services generating $810.9 million a year, or $30,687 every flying hour.

London featured in five of the top 10 most lucrative routes, highlighting the value of limited slots at Heathrow Airport.

Sydney, Singapore and New York’s JFK Airport all appeared twice.

It was not clear if the analysis took into account cancellation rates on particular routes.

Melbourne-Sydney, for example, has the highest rate of cancelled flights in the country.

The latest Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics report for 2018-19 showed Qantas axed 7.1 per cent of services on the route, flying 11,389 services of the 12,270 scheduled.